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Dollhouse season 2 recap
From Zap2it By Jessica Paff
Last season, Ryan theorized that one of the tragic flaws in the 'Dollhouse' finale was that "There's no catharsis without memory". And after Caroline/Omega was wiped, what was left?
What indeed. We start tonight with Topher assuring Ballard that there was no glitch in the wipe and that the 39 personalities Echo exhibited are all in the past. Of course, as he makes this assurance, his computer screen fritzes into a video from The Bride of Frankenstein - a trick he suspects Whiskey has pulled. Which means at least one doll has memory. Adelle also remembers Victor, and as she caresses his receding scars, it's clear hat the memories are fond. It's a crack in the icy facade that vanishes the instant he says "You're touching my face", and I have to wonder if Langton noticed it or if he's too busy worrying about Echo even though he's not her handler anymore. He finds her current assignment particularly distasteful and the next thing we see is Echo...walking down the aisle in wedding dress. I'm with Langton, that's just cruel and unusual punishment!
Speaking of punishment, I got the sense that Topher is engaged in more than a little self flagellation. Beyond the fact that he knows Whiskey is aware that she's an imprint and he hasn't given her a treatment, he's sleeping on the floor of the server room. And enduring Whiskey poking at all the weak spots she knows or can guess at, including letting lab rats loose in his office, which activates his phobia. He calls her in her office and she chillingly tells him to "put the rats back in the maze...before one of them bites you". Is this her subconscious way of asking for a treatment - to be put back into the maze/reimprinted? Are dolls capable of a subconscious?
Perhaps, but in the very next scene Langton talks to her about all the expense Adelle has gone to, to rid Victor of the scars Alpha gave him, and he asks if she's wondering why the same wasn't done for her. She says that it's her scars that keep her safe and if/when Adelle remembers that she was more profitable as a doll she'll be wiped again. He tries to reassure her that he wouldn't let that happen and tries to get her to be less afraid. Her response is my favorite moment of the night as she responds "My entire existence was constructed by a sociopath in a sweater vest, what do you think I should do?". He invites her out to dinner (is that allowed?) but she rattles off a laundry list of phobias that prevent her form leaving the Dollhouse. He tells her everyone is flawed and eventually they realize those are just excuses.
Let me take a moment to mention how very much Amy Acker shines as Whiskey. The scene where she crawls into Topher's bed and in a very convoluted way confronts him about the personality he created for her is intense and heartbreaking as we watch her unravel. Fran Kranz is also fantastic as the moral weight of what Topher's done comes to rest a little more heavily on his shoulders. It seems that as Whiskey refuses to be his self loathing conscience, the task returns to his own hands and I am not at all sure he's up to it. If Epitaph One is any indication...it seems certain he's not.
I don't know what excuses Ballard is telling himself about his interest in Echo, but on her wedding night, he paces, does push-ups and is clearly trying to distract himself from what he knows is going on. I'm wondering how someone would want a wedding with a temporary wife, but it's clear soon enough that the groom (Martin) is not the client. I think the client is Ballard - as Martin is a target the FBI has been unable to grab for years and Echo is playing the part of a double agent collecting intel. Which is confusing, because at the end of last season, I was under the impression that Ballard's goal was going to be finding and capturing Alpha.
There is a strange break in the momentum as Echo is taken in for a treatment, which includes a pelvic exam - a plot point that really drives home what the dolls are often used for, in the most cold and clinical way possible. I know it's a scene that likely bothered a lot of people - but I appreciate that. No one should accept the life the dolls are given and making the audience squirm means that message is being communicated - something I felt season one was lacking. Also in the scene is a startling exchange between Whiskey and Echo, where Echo remembers Whiskey used to be 'number one' and it almost seems like she will pay the price for Alpha's preference for her when Whiskey nearly reaches for a scalpel.
Instead, Echo gets a lollipop and sent back to trap Martin. However, his own spies have pictures of her talking to Ballard and they also know his status as former FBI. Martin confronts his new bride and by "confront" I mean "brutally slams her face into a desk". Which is when the glitching starts and soon enough Echo can't remember which fake name she's supposed to be using. I'm surprised that her Handler doesn't alert the extraction squad, but then realize that's so we can watch Ballard save the day. He waltzes into Martin's airplane hanger and tells him that this isn't the FBI and he doesn't know who he's dealing with.
And that's when things really go downhill for me. I am going to come clean right now and say that I do not like the character of Ballard. I think he is as much a sociopath as Alpha, just with a more stable personality. I don't like his need to be a savior to women who haven't asked for his help, his penchant for rough sex when those women step outside his lines for them, his horrifying dream sequence, his singleminded focus, or his egomanical belief in his own righteousness. Him joining the Dollhouse proved to me that it was never about overthrowing an evil organization and rescuing innocent people - Caroline as an amalgam of them. It was about an inherent fascination with the issues of controlling women. And I completely agree with Adelle when she says that she originally thought he negotiated November's release because he cared so much for her, but she's realized it was just because he was done with her. I know Joss loves to redeem a bad guy, but I'm having a hard time with this one.
As such, him beating Echo senseless to bring on enough of a glitch that he can coax the personality he wants out of her doesn't seem heroic. Does it get good results? Sure - she becomes the kick-ass assassin he wants, takes out all the henchman, and lands the big bad guy. And this is the only place Eliza really shines - when she's...well, slaying. But what does this incident really say about the arc these characters are on? It's hard to tell at this point...but there's enough here that I am ready to strap in for the ride. Especially when the end scene reveals that Echo does remember each and every personality they've given her and knows none of them is real. We take the first step towards Epitaph One with her joining forces with Ballard to find all the real people the dolls used to be. The second step is when Ballard becomes her handler.
I think we all saw Ballard becoming her handler a mile away, but what did you think of the episode overall? Not enough Victor and Sierra for me, the Rossum mention was brief and confusing and the humor at the top of the hour seemed uneven with the rest of the show, but overall I think I can see the stride it could soon be hitting. The question is, will Fox give them more than 13 episodes to get there and beyond?
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9/27/2009, 1:23 am
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Rogue9a
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Re: Dollhouse season 2 recap
From Zap2it By Jessica Paff
It was a charge that I was never entirely comfortable with, since the actives were programed to believe the fantasy of the client and therefore, honestly love them. Which is frankly, a lot worse. Well, tonight, Dollhouse took it one step further, past the bonds of romantic love and into the fundamental and animalistic instincts of motherhood. Did it hit the right note (which should be a dreadfully creepy one)?
Well, it starts out with Ballard confronting the chair and even taking a seat. There is a great exchange between him and Topher, as Topher tries to explain a bit about the process (and his own genius). It produces the best line of the night when he analogizes "The human mind is like Van Halen; if you pull out one piece and keep replacing it, it degenerates". The genius bit, however, has more to do with how he programed the mind to override the body. The slow pull back on Echo breast feeding a newborn in the next scene is appropriately creepy, as we realize she's been programed to believe she is a mother. And to lactate.
The father is clearly uncomfortable around Echo as Emily as well as the baby. Luckily, Emily has a good friend - Sierra as Kelly. While I appreciate Sierra getting some screen time, the biggest thing the scene accomplishes is getting me to ask where this man's actual friends and family are. I mean, his wife dies in childbirth and no one is helping? Not even a concerned co-worker or a social worker from the hospital? Which is a pretty big plot point to have such an inherent weakness in. Anyway, Emily is convinced Nate is having an affair and confronts him with pictures of the baby's real mother as proof of it. He smoothes it over, but as soon as he is alone, he calls Adele to get rid of Emily. Unfortunately, Emily is listening in and takes it to mean that he's plotting to have her killed.
She ends up kidnapping the baby and going to the police, only to have Ballard show up with Nate, flash his FBI badge and drag her back to the Dollhouse. They have to tranquilize her, which means Topher has to wait to wipe her. Fran Kranz packs another emotional punch into a tiny span when Echo as Emily tries to get him to help her by saying he looks like a nice man and Topher responds, with palpable desperation "I am a nice man", as if begging for validation. And in his mind, it is clear that he sees wiping her as a mercy. Except when he tries, it doesn't quite manage to override the instinct of a mother that he turned on in her head. So, she knocks him out cold and escapes, intent of rescuing her child. Last week, I commented that Eliza shines most when kicking ass. I have to say that she doesn't do crazy half bad - especially in the confrontational moment when Nate explains to her what reality is and she asks if she can be the mommy anyway.
In the meantime, Madeline is brought in for a diagnostic. She witnesses Echo get restrained and sparks up a conversation with Ballard about how much pain Echo appeared to be in at the loss of a child. Something that should hit close to home with her, since she lost a daughter. But she tells him that her time as doll took all the pain and sadness of that loss away. It is likely the entire point of bringing her into the episode, which seems a little over-the-top coincidental. All the same, when Echo is retrieved from Nate's house, Ballard offers to tell Topher about how she is remembering so he can figure out how to really wipe her and she can forget all the lives that are seemingly haunting her. He's offering her the same ignorant bliss Madeline told him about. Of course, Echo turns it down.
Our subplot involves Senator Daniel Perrin (Alxis Denisof), who is looking for a way to expose the terrible truths about Rossum. Of course, he means unlicensed experiments and medical procedures. So, when someone drops the Dollhouse mother load on his front door step, he's beside himself in horror over the 'prostitution, human trafficking, and maybe murder '. He comments that what the file contains is better than proof - it's given him a name. Whose name? And who do you think left the file? Boyd? Alpha? Or someone we haven't met yet at all? Or were you (like me) too upset with the lack of Whiskey and Victor to be able to puzzle it all out?
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10/4/2009, 2:00 am
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Rogue9a
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Re: Dollhouse season 2 recap
From Zap2it By Jessica Paff
I suppose that it only makes sense that if the "Dollhouse" caters to the whims of the impossibly wealthy that sometimes it will step outside it's standard lines of operation. Or does it?
After all, we can't really forget that this is new and untested technology, the wiping of minds and implanting of amalgam psyches. Isn't that a grand enough degree of technological magic? It seems to me that it is, so I am rather bewildered by why they get involved in the case of the weird serial killer/coma patient, Terry. Don't get me wrong, I understand why Terry's uncle (played by the woefully underused Michael Hogan of Battlestar Galactica) wanted the Dollhouse involved - to use their technology to help his family avoid scandal and help his antisocial personality disordered nephew continue being mentally ill. But what did the Dollhouse get out of it? They get to keep the uncle as a client? Not for nothing, but they don't really seem to be hurting for engagements.
All the same, get involved they do, dumping the incapacitated Terry's consciousness into Victor and then letting Ballard play the FBI profiler in order to find out where the women he kidnapped are being held so they can avoid those women turning up dead while Terry remains comatose. But somehow, the kindly uncle outsmarts every person and the security system at the Dollhouse and breaks Terry/Victor free. Terry repays the kindness by face slamming his uncle into his steering wheel and running off to find his next victim. Realizing they have let loose a serial killer, Adelle says to track him via the GPS implant all the dolls have, but Topher reminds her that it was removed during his facial reconstruction surgery. Which makes me wonder 2 things.
1. If the dolls have GPS, why not dump Terry's mind into a doll and then just follow him back to his lair of preppy weirdness? Why bother with the profiling at all? 2. The GPS system is implanted into their faces?
Adelle tells Topher to figure out how to remote wipe Victor. Topher tries to explain that he needs a tone and a phone line and suddenly this is starting to sound a whole lot like the Matrix. Owing to Topher's genius, he figures out how to get into Victor's head - by using the bio-link that allows all the handlers to monitor their charges. It means the whole system will get knocked out for a moment, so they warn everyone to expect a few seconds of downtime. Unfortunately, it goes down and stays down.
During all this, Boyd has been handling Echo in order to free up Ballard to profile Terry. Echo has been in an engagement as a student named Kiki who needs "extra credit" from her college professor. When the bio-link snafu occurs, it apparently causes more than one glitch, as she stabs the kinky professor in the neck and utters Terry's catch phrase of "goodness gracious". At the same time, Victor becomes a bubbly girl in a dance club, complete with stripper style dancing. Which is nothing less then hilarious, thanks to Enver Gjokaj's portrayal. Seriously, is there a character this guy can't play like a fiddle?
Terry/Echo heads back to the creepy lair, where his captives have come out of their drug stupors and nearly escaped. Of course, they are confused by the sight of Echo displaying all of their tormentor's whacked out personality traits. I am equally confused by how Ballard manages to find Victor. Either way, he's just in time to save the beefy damsel in distress. Or, he could have been if Victor/Kiki hadn't already laid out the homophobic jock in the popped collar with a single punch. But Kiki's relieved hug at being reunited with Paul makes up for a lot, just based on the humor scale again.
In the end, the heavily armed men in black arrive to the creepy lair just in time to stop one of the captives from doing Echo's bidding and killing her before Terry's psyche returns to the surface. The women get led to safety and Echo gets taken in for a treatment. Returned to the near blank state of a doll, she encounters Ballard looking over the still comatose Terry - whose uncle has decided to take him to a regular hospital and let the less advanced medical sciences deal with him. She tells Ballard that she thinks Terry still dreams and he responds doubtfully before leaving her alone. Letting us close the evening on her saying "goodness gracious".
No Dollhouse next week
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10/12/2009, 3:07 am
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Re: Dollhouse season 2 recap
From Zap2it By Jessica Paff
-Best Episode yet
At its core, tonight was about Sierra's personal history. Not the doll, but the person she was before: Priya. She was an artist and there was a man, Dr. Nolan, that was very interested in her. So much so, that he commissioned her to do a huge painting and threw a big reception to introduce her to the circles of society that he thinks she would most want to have connections with -- the rich and aimless. At this gathering was Matthew Harding (Keith Carradine), a man with a strong position with the Dollhouse. He comments about the amount of trouble Nolan has gone to in order to woo Priya and tells him that they could just make him the perfect woman, but Nolan isn't interested. Also at the party are Echo and Victor, and when Priya meets Victor she attempts to leave the party with him. But his handler comes to take him for a treatment and Nolan explodes, attempting to stop her from leaving and declaring that he "won't take no for an answer." It is a chilling piece of foreshadowing.
Back in the present day, Sierra is still painting in the Dollhouse, but her paintings are showing a pattern of dark shadows. She only comments that she dislikes the color, but Echo takes the painting to Topher and tells him that it's about "the bad man" and that he's not looking hard enough. Perhaps it is the simple fact that he has missed a detail of the human psyche that sends Topher on the search for answers. Whatever the case, Boyd tells him to check the missing Dr. Saunders' notes. Predictably, Saunders attributed the black shapes to fear and hatred of Topher, a theory that was likely more about her projecting her own emotions onto Sierra than anything. Which is made more compelling by the fact that they were emotions that Topher imprinted her with, yet he seems devastated by the idea and his search takes a more personal measure as he desperately tries to prove that he is not the bad man.
What he knows of Priya is that she came to the Dollhouse as a paranoid schizophrenic with vivid aural hallucinations and a persecution delusion. He looks at her brain scans and finds out that she wasn't psychotic despite the neuroleptics -- she was psychotic because of them. And it just so happens that Dr. Nolan, who is one of her repeat clients, is a specialist in the area of neuroleptics. Topher tells Boyd the whole sordid story and declares that they have to tell Adelle, but she's already overheard enough. She calls Nolan in and politely calls him a "raping scumbag one tick shy of a murderer" before telling him that he will never get near Sierra again. Which is when he tells her to imprint Sierra and send her to him forever and Adelle'll get to keep her job. Enter Harding, who makes sure that is exactly what will happen.
Adelle is horrified to have her own "indiscretions" with Victor brought up before she is told that she wouldn't like the Dollhouse's retirement plant -- a thinly veiled reference to the mysterious Attic. Topher argues against sending Sierra to Nolan permanently, asking with a sense of anguish, "How can you expect me to do this?" Adelle tells him that he was chosen for his role in the Dollhouse because he lacks any sense of morality and tells him that he has to let her go. And he does, but not without his own sense of justice.
The personality he imprints Sierra with is Priya. And he tells her the situation, so that when she arrives at Nolan's she's ready for some vengeance. The fight that explodes from her confrontation with him is one of the most disturbing things we've seen on this show. It quickly gets worse as Nolan slams Priya's head into a shelf and grabs a knife, commenting that he should have had her imprinted to struggle before because it's a turn on. It's a stomach-turning comment, which is exactly its purpose, as once Priya gets the upper hand and stabs Nolan to death, we feel zero pity for him. He was inhuman.
What happens next is surprising: she calls Topher. He comes, finds the bloody body of Nolan and then Priya hiding in an alcove. He's telling her they have to run when Boyd shows up, having listened in on the call. And he's come with vat of sulfuric acid and all the tools to chop up and dispose of a body, as well as enough connections to make someone disappear. He gives Topher the task of cutting up Nolan and we watch as Toph further awakens to his own conscience. It seems that with Dr. Saunders no longer there to be the embodiment of it, he has had to accept that responsibility back himself. It's done with no small sense of discomfort.
The end scene is gut wrenching, as Priya prepares to be imprinted as an active again, their cover story firmly in place. After sharing a beer with Topher she asks about Victor, who has apparently remained vigilantly awaiting her return. She recognizes him as the man she really loves and she asks if that is real, which Topher assures her is, and that Victor loves her back. It's a brief glimpse into the fact that Topher can recognize that his science is as imperfect as he is. But the most anguishing moment is when Priya tells him that if he ever wakes her again, she wants him to skip this day. It's a thought that likely every rape survivor has entertained at one time or another. Of course, Topher can't erase it from his own mind, and though he promises to keep the secret of Nolan's murder, he admits that he isn't sure he can live with it.
Echo is a peripheral character this week and Ballard doesn't appear on screen once. It's a fact that makes me wish that this show had been marketed as an ensemble from the beginning, as the characters we spent time with tonight were much closer to the visceral heart of the show. All the same, there are moments that make it clear that Echo is plotting and Boyd is onto her. He finds a book that she is hiding in her sleeping pod -- but he misses the fact that she is writing notes to herself on the inside of the frosted glass. We also get a small hint of Victor's possible past as a moment spent finger painting their faces with Sierra triggers a wartime flashback that leaves him whimpering "I don't want to take charge." Which may be why he joined the Dollhouse -- to never take charge again.
There were also some interesting visual cues happening in tonight's episode. For example, after Priya killed Nolan, she stood up and was shown as the dark shadow over her own painting. Leading me to believe that the shadows on her paintings weren't a manifestation of fear, but of the rage she has now taken possession of. Also, showing his own growing concern over the dolls or his new alignment with them, Topher was dressed more like them than I've ever noticed before, wearing muted tones in soft cotton, rather than his more usual jeans, t-shirt fare and buttoned-up wardrobe.
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10/26/2009, 3:21 am
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